Well done Camrose primary school!

Camrose primary school in Edgware has received award for excellence in teaching assistants from the education consultancy Optimus Education, a part of the commercial education services provider Prospects.
In awarding for the best practice with teacher assistants (TA), Optimus Director of Education Andrew Thraves said: “During my visit, I was very struck with the thoughtful approach the school was taking to helping TAs be as effective as possible.”
Camrose headteacher Sharon Crick said: “This award reflects the commitment we, as a school have, in ensuring all members of the Camrose team are skilled and effective in their roles.”
The school has almost as many TAs as teachers and have multiple duties, including in lesson/ outside lesson academic support, pastoral support and running school clubs, explains Mrs T Chapman, deputy headteacher.
The school was last inspected in 2013 and was graded as good by Ofsted. The inspectors described the school as an average-sized primary school where the large majority of the pupils come from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds – largest group of White heritage but not White British and pupils of Asian heritage formed the second largest group.
The school’s expected combined standards in reading, writing and mathematics in 2017 are 52.5% compared with 61% national.
Considering the school characteristics, performance and the support it could do with, it can only be good that the school enables and deploys the teaching assistants so effectively.
All this sits well with the school’s very balanced approach to its work and the context within which it operates: for example, regarding the highly controversial Prevent Duty, enforced on schools in 2015, the school states:
“At Camrose, we recognise that safeguarding and creating a safeguarding culture is the responsibility of everyone who works here. As a school we recognise that safeguarding against radicalisation is no different from safeguarding against any other vulnerability.”